The Hebrew Bible—in a sea of competitors—survived and bequeathed to the West many of our cherished principles and values. For this reason, the Bible is exceptional. To abandon the Hebrew Bible is not only to abandon the roots of our modern sensibilities and values, but ultimately to abandon the wellspring of the religion that nurtured [...]
In “The City of God,” Augustine systematically lays bare the empty ideology of the city of man and the Roman empire in a breathtaking counter-narrative that remains remarkably modern and relevant for today. In contrast to the city of man, the City of Love, Augustine argues, is the godly city to which Christians belong and [...]
Frequently in public forums, people forget Augustine’s simple truth: Words fail or succeed based on what truth or reality they represent to their audience. Augustine would ask us to further the “mutual intercourse of men” and remember that words serve us by their remembrance, their representation, and their reality. As a literature teacher, I thought [...]
In “The Language of God,” Francis Collins breaks into the debate between faith and reason with intelligible writing and with the strength of his experience as a scientist and the nine-years director of the Human Genome Project. He is a man who found God while deciphering the hidden codes of life. The Language of God: [...]
Banishing memory and the party of memory is nothing short of the banishment of the love and joy which make our lives and memories worth cherishing and conserving. The conservative celebrates the present order precisely because it is imbued with the traces of Eden which vivify our memories—and, therefore, our true selves—and unite us in [...]
It’s true that when trying to understanding Scripture we need to establish an analysis of concrete terms. But if we aren’t careful, we just might explain away the beauty of descriptive language the Bible. Saint Augustine of Hippo encountered the same issue, and not just among his youngest students. In humanities coursework, we often train [...]
If it is the case that time never makes its appearance out in the world but only motion is in evidence, then either time is not or it is in the only other venue of which I can think, inside our soul. Let me first explain my odd-sounding title. It is a variation on the [...]
As did St. Augustine as the barbarians tore through Rome’s gate on August 24, 410, at midnight, J.R.R. Tolkien looked out over a ruined world: a world on one side controlled by ideologues, and, consequently, a world of the Gulag, the Holocaust camps, the Killing fields, and total war; on the other: a world of [...]
No work of Christian theology has left such an impact on the world and biblical interpretation and understanding as St. Augustine’s “City of God.” We who read the Bible do so, often unknowingly, through the eyes of the bishop of Hippo. In 410 A.D., the city of Rome was sacked by the Visigoths. Rome was [...]
Augustine’s “Confessions” is the odyssey of the soul. It is the odyssey of the human heart, as Augustine shifts from the emphasis of intellect to the primacy of love. He shows that it is not by having a strong mind that one is capable of ascent and touching; rather, it is by having a strong [...]
Christians invented the classical curriculum; it is as much part of the broader Western inheritance as it is specifically part of the Christian inheritance. Why study old books? How do dusty old books written by dead men and women thousands of years ago grow my faith? Such can be common thoughts when the Christian is [...]
When our dean asked me to lecture this September it was because I’ve just completed a book on time, and I’m happy to have the opportunity to talk about it. There seemed to be three possible kinds of profit that I figured might come to you and to me if I gave what one might [...]
The Godfather is the Augustinian film par excellence–though it does not conclude where Augustine's vision ends... The Godfather, by Mario Puzo, was the best-selling book when it was first published and the film adaptation by Francis Ford Coppola is rightly considered a masterpiece. The drama of The Godfather is an epic; it is an epic because [...]
Virtue is what the good city aims to achieve as part of the common good. Since humans are social animals and creatures of actions, the call to cultivate virtue within civil society is a fundamental aspect of the good society and the good regime... Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords our readers the [...]